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is it still a tiger?

alpine_64

Donation Time
Short answer NO.

On the upside, the guy is honest about what he has done.. he welded a bunch of MKIA tiger bits into a SIV Alpine.. and he openly admits not even all the parts...

"The restoration consisted of using a rust free Series IV Alpine body, to which engine mounts from the Tiger where transfered properly. Likewise for the center transmission console and exhaust passages. I tried to choose the best of the two cars by retaining the Alpine hard soft top covers and kept the spacious trunk by retaining the vertical spare tire well. "

Checking stoa-tigerclub my serial number is for an early Tiger Mk1A actually, but since the body is a Series 4 Alpine and the body style is more similar to the Mk1, I have always called it a Mk1. I have never looked or cared about the serial numbers on the other parts and don't even know where they would be located.

This is now a V8 powerd alpine with "some" Tiger parts... he hasnt tried to replicate a Tiger even.. that said.. he thinks in his mid it still is.. but if he is expecting genuine tiger money for it.. he will be owning it for quite a long time.
 

Alpineracer8

Donation Time
No...this car has now become a classic example of a "re-body." At best, the fellow now has a modified Alpine. This is exactly what the Shelby community gets up in arms about when someone takes all the Shelby parts off a crashed or rusted Shelby and puts them on a regular Mustang tub, then claims it to be a Shelby.
 

puff4

Platinum Level Sponsor
Yep, agree... it's an Alger or Tipine, but certainly not a Tiger (or true Alpine, for that matter!).

Why one would mess up a perfectly good Alpine by corrupting it with that Ford crap is totally beyond me. ;)
 

tony perrett

Gold Level Sponsor
I can never understand why people describe a "complete frame-off restoration" on a car that is of unibody (monocoque) construction.
 

agmason54

Donation Time
Beamers
Close enough for me since all Tigers are nothing but butchered Alpines, years ago a fellow came to me wanting a hood for his $20,000 Tiger. You should have heard him whine when I asked for $100 for my nice hood which I kept and ran him off....
Agm
 

65beam

Donation Time
tiger

it's not illegal to remove vin tags and rebody a car if you go thru the proper channels. i have to agree with al that all tigers are modified alpines. as far as an alger goes,there are many that have tac stickers on them. and don't say the vin rivets are something special and can't be duplicated. there was a box of the rivets for sale at a united a few years back. i have several sets of them myself. then there are guys like me that have converted a MK 2 back to an alpine. we even used MK 2 fenders on the rear of my series 4 when we restored it.
 

Chuck Ingram

Donation Time
Yep, agree... it's an Alger or Tipine, but certainly not a Tiger (or true Alpine, for that matter!).

Why one would mess up a perfectly good Alpine by corrupting it with that Ford crap is totally beyond me. ;)

Oh my.I guess I'so corrupted I can never ever go back

Have to agree it is now an Alger.also a felony to switch VIN tags
 

Warren

Bronze Level Sponsor
Tag

The vin tag in the pic is a steel home brewed POS just like the car.
The number is also incomplete.
Anyone in the trade knows the amount of re tagged Chevy Ford and every other mass produced car out there, State law governs the restoration procedure for a vin tag but nobody does it.

If you would like to read a quality pissing match read the reboding thread on the UK Tiger site.

3 guys would have to be bought off to obtain a TAC by decit. Norm or Graham would also have to verify the numbers on the trans rear end and door locks make it a numbers matching car.

This e bay seller and me probably weld better than the Englishmen with their primitive equipment.

I will not go into the original rivet debate.

What is important is history on a car and that the body was originally produced as a Tiger and that's how TAC separates the wheat from the chaffe.

This Ebay car wasn't and seller says so, further more what happened to the original vin tag is not known, is it on a Alger or other replicant waiting for a uninformed buyer?

At a current price of about 5000 it seems to be more than what the Tiger specific parts would go for.

66 Tiger MK1A TAC'ed
 

volvoguys

Diamond Level Sponsor
Bob,

I'm kinda curious under what circumstances any state DMV would allow a VIN tag to be removed from one car and placed onto another?

Thx, Mark
 

65beam

Donation Time
tiger

get real guys!!! it's done every day all over the country. the sunbeam vin tag rivets are easy to come by and easy to install correctly.
 

volvoguys

Diamond Level Sponsor
Bob,

Please re-read and answer the question as asked. I understand that VIN swapping is done but in an earlier post someone says that switching tags is a felony. Your reply was "it's not illegal to remove vin tags and rebody a car if you go thru the proper channels". How so?

Thx, Mark
 

Alpineracer8

Donation Time
Yes, Bob...I echo Mark's question. How do you do that? What are the "proper channels" that you are referring to? I assume that there would be some sort of paperwork that would follow the re-bodied car, correct?
 

Warren

Bronze Level Sponsor
Intent

In Cali. the state law which seems to be contrary to the fed law. JUST LIKE

Growing pot plants in the back yard or smoking it or selling it.

Now that that is out of the way.

Cali. looks to the intent to deceive, for example
You have $1200 of parking tickets on your car they don't send you the registration you get the tag off your parts car and fool the DMV by using the old clear parts car vin.

Easy to do since only two guys in the world have the copies of the Jensen ledgers and could ID a car with out a tag and see what other ID'ed parts were on the car.

Does one or two persons have the Sunbeam Alpine ledgers as well?
Just for fun look at Boyd what's his name Cottington who got popped for creating old Fords so now we have more than were originally produced

Look at Moss Motors they sell vin tags for Morris Mokes Minors and Mini Coopers. Several vendors reproduce the tags and advertise on line. They have their safeguards for you to prove up that you are not making the car into a Chevy RS SS 396 or like my pals car a W-30 Oldsmobile big buck car.
In the real world who the heck would mess around with such small potatos
when they could be hammering together a Mopar mad money car, or RHD Jag roadster and make some real money.

Several Tigers have been sold at auction with repop machine engraved vin tags North of 50K
Were they TAC'ed ? nobody knows. Just like in the BON the story of a fooled em all car or the paint code number changed to reflect the current resale red color of the car.

The first step on slippery slope starts when the valve cover tag is replaced with a Sunbeam specialties et al repop on a different motor. A step that has been done on nearly every Tiger.

As a Tiger owner, I think there is better engine choices that don't add all the cast iron on top of the front wheels. I enjoy seeing the Darkside creations and most of them may get more than a 164 to 225 HP period correct engined and do better HP to weight wise.

The Shelby guys Tiger Guys and everyone with a collector should be interested in not letting a fraud continue or occur, not just those wankers in Gov't who think they are getting gipped loosing sales tax. Add to the list E.P.A. D.O.T. F's and Green Nazis who look at us as gross polluters and rich people with their rich toys.

Over 7K for that rusty bucket according to the auction close but it is Ebay the thief's and liars market for the 21st century.
 

Nickodell

Donation Time
I wrote to the "Question to Seller" section saying that he was being misleading by listing the car as a Tiger, despite his later explanation. They didn't publish it.
 

Alpineracer8

Donation Time
Cali. looks to the intent to deceive

Actually, Warren, that's exactly what happens when you change a VIN on a car; the person who switches the VIN around has just proven their intent to deceive. In the case of the original subject of this discussion thread, the Ebay Alpine donor car that received the Tiger parts, the VIN was intentionally swapped from the Tiger to the Alpine, making the resulting car that which it never was, nor was ever intended to be. I realize that the seller has been up front in his ad that this is what had been done, but that still does not right the wrong that has been committed. A car is "born," if you will, with a particular VIN and it is, by law, expected to carry that VIN from its initial construction all the way until its ultimate demise, be that by accident or by just falling into a state of total disrepair to the point to where it needs to be crushed. In the eyes of the law, this is the way it is.

VINs don't get switched by accident or for no reason at all; in every case like this, it was deliberately done. One must wonder about what would motivate a person to do that. Is it to "save" a rare car or is it for financial gain...or perhaps both? First of all, in my opinion, there is no "saving" of a rare car if you have to throw the original tub away and use another body. At the point when the VIN off of the "rare" (read "more valuable" and/or "more desirable or marketable") car is removed and placed on another body that is being used as a donor, the unbroken line of history following the "rare" tub that originally carried that VIN is broken; it can no longer be honestly represented as the "rare car" that it is purported to be. It simply becomes, from that point forward, a facsimile of that "rare car" that is purely masquerading as that "rare car," simply because the tub that is now in use to supposedly preserve the "rare" model was never intended by the factory to be that model. So, why would a person expend this much effort and risk getting into some serious trouble with the authorities? It's simple...money is the prime motivator. That person is either trying to protect his initial investment, or he's trying to, as we say around here, "stick a fat hog;" i.e. trying to make a profit by intentionally re-creating a car that, by all rights, is dead. I don't know about you guys, but I don't know too many people who would go to this much trouble just for some measure of self-satisfaction of being able to say "I saved that rare car from the crusher." No, the ultimate in satisfaction for that person comes when it's time to sell the car on to an unsuspecting buyer. How many of these sellers do you guys think disclose the fact that they had the VIN swapped over because the original car was just too far gone to save?

No matter what we are being told to the contrary, a person who is engaged in the act of swapping VINs between cars is breaking the law...period. In the end, we all pay the price for that kind of nonsense. True enough, Alpines and Tigers do look a whole lot alike, and there are people on this forum who are under the mistaken notion that "all Tigers are modified Alpines." If that were true, then by definition Rootes would have had to have taken completed Alpine shells, removed their VIN tags, then deconstructed them to the point of being able to add the Tiger-only parts, then re-VIN them as Tigers. Of course, to any reasonable person, this notion is absolutely laughable. I would love to be present while watching and listening to someone of that opinion try to explain themselves and their notions to the Rootes engineers of the day. They would have most assuredly been summarily escorted out of the building and placed in a rubber truck!!!

Warren is correct when he states that "The Shelby guys Tiger Guys and everyone with a collector (car) should be interested in not letting a fraud continue or occur..." Let's face it; with the rising price of Tigers in the marketplace, the Tiger community saw this coming and created the TAC program in an effort to expose the fraudulent vehicles and keep them from tainting the Tiger market. This is no different than SAAC keeping tabs on every single Cobra and Shelby out there; their main thrust is to keep the frauds from being passed off as the real thing. Eventually, this hurts the entire market and can have an impact on the value of the "real" cars of each model.

The bottom line here is that VIN switching, though it may be being done "every day all over the country" as one of our outspoken Tiger-bashing posters puts it, is still as illegal as the day is long. Anyone who tells you any different is kidding themselves and, in the worst case scenario, could be trying to fool others. Shame on those who participate in this practice.
 

Ken Ellis

Donation Time
Wile doing a little research into the referenced 'proper channels', I ran across an interesting scenario. Folks were discussing replacing the dash on a modern, non-collectible car. Either to change the interior color/trim level, or to repair a sun-cracked part. Problem is, the dash has the VIN tag on it with tamper-proof rivets, etc. They were having a hard time getting the concept thru to the DMV that all they were doing was replacing the dash... a commonly-available replacement part. So, clearly no intent to deceive, but alteration of the tag and mount was forbidden as well. They were stumped.

For this specific reason, I think there should be some resolution short of a new state-issued VIN (which will blemish their carfax). I don't think that solution should extend to "putting a new car underneath the VIN tag" that happens in collector markets.

I. too would be interested in seeing the "correct procedure" spelled out as requested in the post above. Can't just throw that out there without the details...

(I realize this may sit for a bit, as many folks are touring Tennessee for awhile.)
 

Bikesandfires

Donation Time
Bob,

I'm kinda curious under what circumstances any state DMV would allow a VIN tag to be removed from one car and placed onto another?

Thx, Mark

Information on every state is here:
http://www.bipac.net/page.asp?content=tag_title_toolbox&g=SEMAGA

I looked at Ky. site and it appears under SOME circumstances it is legal to swap a VIN. I looked at Ohio also and it is def permissible, but possibly easier with body on frame vehicles. I guess in that case the frame is whats titled and not the body. A lot of older cars have the VIN attached to the drivers door. What happens when the door rusts, or is wrecked? Change the door or junk the car? I have a friend that owns a COPO 427 Camaro that he has totaled 2 times, the only original body part left on that car is the cowl, with VIN attached. The entire front end is replacement sheetmetal, the car was clipped to repair it, meaning it was cut in half and the rear half of a completly differnt car was used to weld it back together. Is IT the same valuable vehicle it was when new??
 
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